A talented baker spent more than 330 hours to painstakingly create an amazing life-size replica of Peaky Blinders Tommy Shelby entirely out of cake. Mum-of-two Jane Lashbrook, 53, sculpted the incredible 5ft 8ins tall Cillian Murphy character from the gritty BBC drama entirely out of sponge cake.
She scoured the internet to get the exact measurements of the Irish actor and even made sure his shoes were the right size. It then took the cake maker 336 hours to craft it into the image of the Brummie gangster with little touches like his signature cigarette, waistcoat and a pocket watch.
Alongside Tommy sits a bust of his brother Arthur and New York mobster Luca Changretta, which were created by bakers Stephanie Would and Corinna Maguire. The trio's amazing creations have gone on display today (Friday) at the Cake International show at Birmingham's NEC.
Jane, from London, said: "Stephanie organised the Peaky Blinders stand and came to me and asked me if I would make Tommy and I said I would love to. I went and did him fully standing up. I couldn't just do a bust of him, you have to go full size for Tommy Shelby as he is the main man.
"He's life-sized too, the right height and shoe size. You have to give a few millimetres either way but I took his statistics and tried to get exact body measurements.
"He’s around 5ft 8, and wears a size 10 shoe. Its made from a sponge cake with rice crispy mixture, icing and sugar paste. I think it’s all quite difficult to put together, especially with the arm measurements to make sure it fits.
"I wanted to get a relatively accurate size proportions so that he was as accurate as possible.
Mum-of-three Stephanie, 38, who owns Cake Nation in Bradford, West Yorkshire, added: “It takes a lot of planning. We chose the Peaky Blinders because they had their series finale this year and with it being in Birmingham, we thought it would be great. I had to get in touch with producers to get copyright release to produce it.
"I did Arthur and he took about a day-and-a-half to do, so around 12-15 hours. I’ve never really done a portrait of a person before. Trying to get the moustache together and make it look realistic it was incredibly hard."
